Alvarez & Marsal Content

Spend Matters welcomes this guest post from Jeannie Pumphrey, senior director at Alvarez & Marsal.

Third-party risk management (3PRM) continues to be one of the top three risk-related topics discussed in the boardrooms and amongst executive management teams in the financial services industry. As corporations tackle the task of segmenting their provider base and identifying and managing the risk inherent to the use of third parties, lack of clarity regarding appropriate program ownership, accountability and responsibility forms a common challenge.

Spend Matters welcomes this guest post from Michael Nelson of Alvarez & Marsal. Ask any executive in a product-based company if they think a formal Sales, Inventory and Operations Planning (SIOP) process is critical to success in their business and they will immediately say “yes, of course.” Ask them if their companies have this process in place, or do it well, and they will just as quickly say “no, not yet.” So, why is this the case in too many companies? It is hard to do, and even harder to do well! There are several factors that contribute to difficulty in SIOP implementation and process stabilization. However, if you understand the failure modes, you have a much better chance of successfully implementing a beneficial Sales, Inventory & Operations Planning process. Here's how.

Spend Matters welcomes this guest post from Wayne Weil, director, performance improvement at Alvarez & Marsal.

One of the hottest topics in the financial services regulatory world is third-party risk management (3PRM). While regulated firms scramble to meet new guidelines, they may be surprised to find there is a group within their organization that has been working to accomplish many of the same goals for years: the procurement organization. The people, processes and tools found within most procurement organizations can provide a powerful complement to the compliance organization’s third-party risk management aims. As firms grapple with developing compliant 3PRM programs, they would be well served to partner with their procurement teams to jump-start the implementation, as well as to capture the additional hard-dollar benefits that have been the yardstick for success in traditional vendor management.

Spend Matters welcomes this guest post from Griff Causey and Liz Barnett, of Alvarez & Marsal.

Companies spend an extraordinary amount of time and resources collecting and analyzing data for transportation spend. There are a myriad of sophisticated modeling tools that promise insights and results, and yet even with the available tools, many companies cannot explain the budget variances for transportation. Drawing on our extensive logistics transformation work across a number of industries and geographies, here are our insights on how your organization can use analysis of transportation spend to drive operational decision-making, change the behavior of the logistics function and create a culture of continuous improvement.

Spend Matters welcomes this guest post from Alvarez & Marsal by Julie Diehl, managing director, Jefferson Howell, director, and Erin Campbell, manager.

The transition from a procurement organization serving as a process facilitator to a true strategic business partner is a daunting task — structures that have evolved without formal design, limited communication, resource skill gaps and disparate data can often create barriers to progression. Though these challenges are not unique to the public sector, the regulatory and statutory constraints under which these agencies operate are. In this article, we will walk through three ways agencies overcome these challenges and begin to move up the maturity curve to provide real, strategic value.

Spend Matters welcomes this guest post from Matt Stanfield, senior director with Alvarez & Marsal Business Consulting in Atlanta.

As with any commodity, plastic sourcing introduces a high degree of complexity to managing your cost of goods sold and the subsequent impact on operating margin. The sources of this complexity are rooted in four primary areas that need to be actively understood and managed

Spend Matters welcomes this guest post from Bill Stotzer, managing director, and Helen Van Ness, of Alvarez & Marsal.

In any size company and in any economic environment, strong management of working capital should take center stage. Why? In our opinion, it is one of the best ways to quickly improve and sustain the financial strength of your company. So if working capital is so powerful, why doesn’t it demand more focus and expertise? Simply stated, managing working capital has become a highly distributed set of competing responsibilities within the typical corporate structure, each driving to their independent objectives. We have several observations after working with our clients to implement solutions for many of these challenges.

Spend Matters welcomes a guest post from Kamran Siddiqui and Justin Glazer; Alvarez & Marsal Business Consulting, LLC. On any media and advertising sourcing effort, […]

Spend Matters welcomes a guest post from Eric Narsolis, Erica Pak, Jared Hutchins, and Jeff Schlosser, with Alvarez & Marsal Business Consulting. Asset disposition is […]

Spend Matters welcomes a guest post from Jim Pfeiffer, a Senior Director with Alvarez & Marsal Business Consulting. Commercial print can be a complex category […]

Spend Matters welcomes a guest post from Cyndi Joiner, Managing Director; Geoffrey Pollak, Senior Director; and Chris Alcorn, Director, Alvarez & Marsal. There are three […]

In the last post in this series, Amy O'Brien-Bird and Bill Stotzer of Alvarez & Marsal discussed how companies can optimize their marketing spend through […]